Client spotlight: Chasing adventure together

For Jess and Paul Schmitt, what started as a “someday” dream slowly became a bold reality: a year on the road as a family of six exploring the country together.

With four kids—now ages 10, 8, 5 and 3—and their 12-year-old Goldendoodle, the Schmitts, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, traded routine for RV life, homeschooling and visits to 47 national parks. Hear from Jess and Paul about their great adventure.

Paul: There really wasn’t one big moment; it was more of a slippery slope. And then when we bought a camper, that solidified the deal.
Jess: It was a childhood dream of mine, and Paul caught my enthusiasm. The kids were up to come along for the ride.

Paul: I’m an airline pilot. We bid for jobs monthly, so I was able to creatively adjust our schedules to do both. I could park the family and commute. I’d put two trips together and then have extra time in between trips to be with my family. No one really had to know and my income really didn’t drop much.
Jess: It was a bigger step for me as I actually had to leave my job. I’m a pediatric nurse practitioner. I had mixed feelings as I have a really supportive work environment. However, my boss left the door open for me to return. So I will be returning to my job in September, and I also have accepted a new position in an inpatient hospital role. Both offer light schedules [two or three days a week total] and the new role gives me career advancement.

Paul: We went in to meet with our Thrivent financial advisors [Brad Hunt and Josh Wikstrom]. They knew what we were planning and had the whiteboard in their office completely covered, floor to ceiling, with different scenarios to consider.
Jess: They had done a lot of research into what it could cost to do a trip like this and helped identify where there could be hidden costs. We already had an emergency fund. And we had switched the direct deposit for my paycheck into a separate account, so we were living off Paul’s salary only to ease ourselves into this.

Jess: As we’ve looked over the past year, even with keeping our home and paying our mortgage while we were gone, we actually spent less per month than we did while living at home. We had savings in terms of fewer kids’ activities, no Amazon, and no childcare or fitness center costs. All those things add up in daily life. We weren’t sacrificing our lifestyle, but we did spend less.
Paul: We eat out more at home than we did on the road, too. We could easily have fallen into the habit of getting fast food, but we were intentional about planning our meals and cooking at the campsite. Unlike what people may imagine, however, we didn’t sit around a campfire with s’mores every night.

Jess: My biggest fear was that I’d be overwhelmed by being on my own with the kids and no support network when Paul needed to leave for work. There were times that came true, like when the car broke down and I was trapped at the campsite.
Paul: We were in the middle of nowhere Washington, more isolated, no internet. But the kids had a great time. They made friends with other kids, and Jess befriended another mom.
Jess: We helped each other with childcare. Some good Samaritans at the campground helped us do a grocery run. I was baking bread for people we met there. It worked out.
Paul: We always knew the worst-case scenario was that we could go back home and back to normal life. The hardest part is always just getting started. You just have to go in not expecting that every day is going to be perfect. It’s setting the appropriate expectations and planning for pitfalls. And fortunately we didn’t have many.

Jess: If we were staying at a park, I’d wake up early and go for a hike alone. Then it was breakfast, coffee and homeschool. Then we’d go to the visitor center and do the Junior Ranger program. We’d figure out the most compelling activities and explore. If we were going to be traveling, we’d pack up and hit the road. We usually did homeschool as we were driving on those days.
Paul: We did a lot of hikes, but it also was tough to do a lot of long hikes with four kids. And we didn’t do them two days in a row. We needed a day of unstructured play in between. This really was an appetizer round of travel for us. We can go back to parks we want to see again.

Paul: That morphed as we traveled. The beginning plan was two different loops—the northwest during last summer (2025), back to Minnesota for a few weeks before the fall, then the southwest for the fall. It was roughly mapped, and I used an RV route planning website. We had to do reservations at a few parks during peak season, but we otherwise looked at what a logical route would be and winged it. The more experience we had with that, we started to enjoy the improvisational way of traveling.
Jess: We were able to live in the moment more and visit family spread all over the country. We were in the north in the summer, in the cooler part of the country. Then we went south when it got colder.

Jess: I’m an introvert, so when Paul was with us, I would hike. Taking time for myself set me up for the day. Habits that have helped me in general are reading the Bible daily and listening to podcasts. If I could take care of myself, I would have a lot to give the kids.
Paul: Spending a lot of time outdoors is always helpful. If we were cooped up inside because of rain, those were usually the hardest days. We couldn’t wait to get out and let the kids run.

Paul: Broadly speaking, before we started the trip, I expected most of the parks would be similar. That was not correct. Every park has its thing. There’s so much diversity in the parks; each one is unique and special, which makes discovering each one a new adventure and a surprise. We loved Yellowstone and Grand Teton. I’d love to go back and spend more time at Glacier. There are some really incredible hikes, but they’re more advanced. Some of our other favorites would be the ones off the beaten path, like Great Basin in northern Nevada. It has a glacier.
Jess: Great Basin also has the oldest individual living organism, bristlecone pine trees. They just took my breath away. Bryce Canyon was another highlight—one of the best hikes I’ve ever been on. I did it three times. In Olympic we saw a completely different ecosystem. It felt like we were in the jungle sometimes and then we’d be seeing orcas from a ship. Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Canyonlands, Everglades, Big Bend, Carlsbad Caverns. All of them are favorites. This is what’s remarkable about the United States—we have so many amazing natural wonders here and the diversity is stunning.

Jess: Our land cruiser, which had 600,000 miles on it at the start of the trip, broke down. We kind of expected it to fail, and it did. That was a bit of a setback because we had to wait for it to be repaired. Thankfully we had planned for the cost. That was one of our contingency plans; we didn’t know what would go wrong but we knew something would. It was less stressful from a financial standpoint than a logistical standpoint of not having an extra vehicle. We went almost a month without a second vehicle, which was challenging.

Jess: I really liked homeschooling, the flexibility we had and the curriculum we used. I got to watch our second youngest learn how to read, so that was a fun experience. And one of our other children had been struggling a little in school. This gave me the opportunity to give him a lot of one-on-one help, so he made a lot of gains. I feel really confident about him returning to school. He’ll be ready. Plus they learned so much from being on the road and doing the Junior Ranger program at all the national parks. They got a lot of extra learning that they otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to.
Paul: I really wanted the kids to experience being resilient and flexible. We had that baked into every day as they learned to manage expectations, to go with the flow and appreciate where you are rather than where you’re going or where you were. Those kinds of things are intangible and they’re not really taught, but they were given a unique opportunity to experience that. And they learned to be each other’s best friends and support network.

Paul: If we hiked two days in a row, we heard about it.
Jess: There often was resistance to doing homeschool, even though it would only take an hour. Their procrastination would turn it into two or three hours.

Jess: Our youngest really grew up on this trip. When we started he was in a crib and by the time we finished he was hiking on his own and playing with the big kids. Our oldest really grew in the amount of responsibility that he could handle, the amount of independence, and in being more helpful.

Jess: In the national parks, sometimes we’d need to leave Dolly in the camper. We were exploring the visitor center at Wind Cave National Park when we heard a PA announcement from a ranger asking if the owner of a white dog could come to the visitor center desk. We went, and there was Dolly, the happiest she’d ever been, surrounded by three rangers, all petting her. She was thrilled with her life,
Paul: She got a screen on a window open and jumped out. It must have been six or seven feet. And she came searching for us. Some rangers intercepted her. We learned how to set her up a little better for success in the camper.

Paul: We had some kitchen and bathroom remodeling going on while we were gone, so we’re excited for that. I also was ready to get some meaningful exercise again. With kids on hikes, it’s not fast.
Jess: I was excited to be back near our community, with our family and friends, and to start a new job. The kids are excited to start school, and Paul to get back to his normal schedule. And we were all ready for a little more routine, more space and spreading out a bit in the house.

Jess: We’re already trying to declutter and live with less. Living in 300 square feet with just our bare necessities has shown me we don’t need a lot of stuff. We really thrive when we’re not bogged down by physical possessions. The more we can live with less, the happier and freer we are going to feel.

Paul: I don’t ever recall wishing I had something. Because I still worked, if something was left behind, like a favorite stuffed animal, I could stop by and pick it up.
Jess: We were very intentional in what we packed. And if something wasn’t being used, it was gone. The lesson in this is that there is very little we truly need.

Jess: Make a plan, get some people on your team to help you feel confident and secure, and go for it!
Paul: A lot of people think there will be a time when everything will line up perfectly. In reality, you just need to do it. If we waited until we were ready, we wouldn’t do anything. People imagine barriers. I’d like to help people realize those barriers are self-imposed. You can make the choice.

Jess: I hope an appreciation for our natural world and a desire to preserve it. I also hope they remember this time as a family. It’s more important to collect memories than it is to collect things.